Sonia Kruger on post-baby bodies, IVF and the beauty product she’d “die” without.

Sonia Kruger is many things – television alumni, Swisse ambassador, mother and wife. The trait that comes across immediately upon meeting her? Her honesty.

Sonia’s not going to make her life appear retouched to perfection when the reality is, thanks to her gorgeous baby Maggie, she walks around with “vomit” on her more often than not.

We spoke to Sonia about her experience of miscarriage, motherhood and her biggest regrets.

There’s so much pressure today to come out and share a post-baby body snap. What’s your take on this?

“I hate that, I really do and I think it is ridiculous. For me, and most women out there, your focus is on recovering from labour and recovering from pregnancy. It’s six months down the track for me since birth and I am still 10 kilos over what I was before I got pregnant. So part of me thinks, ‘I should be back at the gym and I should be living on salad’ but the fact is you need energy to look after a baby and you’ve got to give your body fuel.”

Read more: Sonia Kruger shares her greatest fear about her pregnancy. 

A lot of new mothers feel bad about their bodies because it’s setting up such unrealistic expectations.

“Exactly. My advice would be to shut it down on Instagram; unfollow, ignore those pictures because they’re unrealistic and they do they set all women up to feel bad about themselves and we shouldn’t be feeling that way, we should just be concentrating on getting our strength back.”

You struggled to conceive through IVF for a while – was it a difficult time for you?

“It’s definitely different for everyone, but for me what was taxing was the losses, the miscarriages. For a lot of women that is the case because often it won’t be just one round — it will be two, it will be three, and four and sometimes 10 or more. I think it’s dealing with those losses that’s the hardest. It’s hard to talk to people about because it’s such a private thing. It’s not something you let your colleagues know about – you just want to share it with very few people. It’s very difficult.”

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How did you cope with your miscarriages and what’s your advice to those experiencing the same thing?

“You’ve got to have one or two really close people that you can talk to about it. For me, Craig, my partner, would help me. He would feel that loss just as badly as I would but he never made me feel like the door was closed and we couldn’t try again [for a baby] and I think that’s the thing that picks you up. And whether that means moving on and trying again or moving on and not continuing on that path anymore, that’s a really personal decision that ultimately no one can help you with. You need to listen to your own intuition.”

Read more: Why you are keeping the first 12 weeks a secret. 

What’s the budget beauty product you can’t live without?

“I wear so much makeup every day that if I didn’t have micellar water, I would die. It’s great to get off all of that makeup because if you use really heavy cleansers day in, day out, you can get some issues; I get really watery eyes and my eyes get really sensitive. I buy a big bottle of micellar water for around $40 and I love it, you can buy it from the chemist."

Has your beauty routine changed since having a baby?

“After you’ve had the baby – and this is one of the things they don’t tell you about pregnancy – you get very sweaty because your body needs to get rid of all that fluid you’ve built up over nine months. You come home from the hospital and you go to bed at night and you will wake up and the sheets will be wet because you are sweating out all of the extra fluid.”

“You’re a sweaty hot mess, covered in vomit for a while and then when you do get into the shower you kind of go, ‘oh wow this is a treat’. Gradually you start to get more confident and you do work out when you can have a shower and then you go, ‘Oh, I’ll put some lipstick on today!’”

What’s your trick for keeping your relationship with your husband Craig McPherson healthy?

“I actually learnt this from a cab driver, who had been married for something like 50 years and I asked him what his secret was. He said it comes down to two things: affection and respect. If you don’t have those two things you won’t have a successful marriage and it’s so true, you have to be affectionate with one another — you need to hold hands, you need to be intimate and you need to be physically close and affectionate with one another. You also need to respect that person because once you lose respect that’s it: game over.”

Read more: Jamila Rivzi talks about the huge change she still wasn't prepared for after a baby. 

You returned to work a few months after Maggie was born, was there any backlash for that decision?

“I think it’s becoming less of an issue because whether you’re a high-flying banking executive or a part time worker, it’s still the ‘leaving your child’ part that you need to get your head around. I’m lucky, I feel like a part-time worker because I get to have the afternoon with Maggie. For some women, to be able to leave the home and go to work and have adult conversations and get back to the real world, so to speak, it is a good thing for their mental wellbeing – even though part of me thinks, ‘wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to be home everyday with her’.

How do you turn crappy days into positive ones?

“I drink [laughs]. No I’m joking. I try to have a laugh – David [Campbell, Sonia’s Mornings co-host] and I were having a bit of an average morning and then something happened and we just cracked up laughing. You need to find a way to have a big belly laugh and if it involves having a glass of wine with your girlfriends so be it; it’s not a bad thing at all.”

What is one thing you wish you’d done different in your career?

“I wish, I had done a Journalism degree earlier in life. I enrolled to do a ‘writing for the media’ course and I got three weeks in and dropped out. I was working full time at Channel 7 at the time and I just thought, ‘There is no way I can do this and work’. I saw the course outline and I started having a cold sweat. Some formal training somewhere along the line would have been good.”

Read more: Too much sex may not equal happiness. 

You’re an ambassador for Swisse, have you always been health-conscious?

“Yes, I danced from a young age. I was about nine when I started ballroom dancing, I was doing Jazz classes when I was about five, so because of that I was always fairly fit. It’s when you get a little bit older and you stop doing that that you can easily slip into a bit more of an unhealthy way of living, you know? And as an adult it’s harder than when you are younger.”

If you’ve been through a miscarriage, stillborn baby or infant death, you can contact SANDS for support here or on their 24-hour hotline: 1300 0 72637.